Crack One Open
by Her Head In the Clouds
Summary: "Because it's long overdue." And that's how she ended up running against the clock. -Oliver/Felicity


**I ship them. _So hard._ Like I swear, may the Flying Spaghetti Monster take me away in the night if they end up in a brother-sister relationship or she leaves the show. Ahem wow. Haha well okay then, enjoy!**

* * *

_And away we go._

START.

**2 minutes : 00 seconds**

Felicity wipes her forehead of sweat and takes a deep breath. Her lungs are on fire, her throat is dry and raw. She then wipes her hand across the back of her neck.

_Ick,_ is all she can give herself the time to think.

**1 minute : 58 seconds**

With a shaky huff, she quickly and silently (as a girl with no previous skill only can) moves across the metal scaffolding. When she reaches the end of it, rather than take the stairs that descend to the main floor, she nimbly hoists herself on its skinny railing. Felicity takes a moment to stare down at the dark (seemingly) empty floor below her. She bites her lip thoughtfully.

**1 minute : 54 seconds**

Her heart drops into stomach as she tenses for what comes next. Felicity eases herself into a stand, her knees tightening as she stretches up and grabs onto the ledge of the upper, third floor adjacent to her head.

Then she sucks in a breath and her gut, and pulls herself up with her arms. It is painful and slow and she fears she almost can't do it. But she can't quit: the clock is still active and if she tries to go back down, she knows she'll make enough noise to give away her position.

**1 minute : 47 seconds**

When she's mildly confident she has pulled up enough, she makes a risky move and lets one arm reach up to grab for an invisible steel rod that she knows is there running on a horizontal guard railing.

She finds it! So she clutches it tight to haul the rest of herself up.

'_Thank you, Diggle, you psycho army nut, for forcing those chin-ups on me for four months!'_ she cries in her head.

**1 minute : 44 seconds**

Going over the railing, Felicity narrowly loses balance as she lands onto the new floor but manages to catch herself. She drops on her palms and one knee silently to steady herself.

Silently being the operative word. Too bad it wasn't.

Her knee bangs softly against the steel floor creating a dull _doomp!_ sound.

_Shit!,_ she screams in her head.

**1 minute : 39 seconds**

She feels it, the shift in atmosphere. Felicity's whole body goes rigid in fear as blood drums painfully in her ears. Her palms are spread flat against the cold steel, sweaty and spazzing.

No doubt she's been heard.

So she takes no extra pause and pushes herself into a crouch. Her mistake has left her angry and shaking. Felicity quickly tries to run. She bends her neck achingly low so that her blonde ponytail doesn't get caught in the unforgiving moonlight that shines through the warehouses' many windows.

**1 minute : 36 seconds**

But she's so focused on where the cover of the shadows are, that she fails to see the wrench left on the ground.

**1 minute : 35 seconds**

Her toe jams into it painfully, but the screech of steel sliding across steel is even worse.

_Sweet Christ, son of bitch!,_ she screams like murder in her head.

She instinctively raises both arms as she cringes with her eyes shut. _'I'm dead! I'm dead! Game over!'_

She hears the sound of two boots from the lowest level, _on the other side of the warehouse,_ shuffle off madly towards her general direction.

**1 minute : 32 seconds**

Felicity's running turns instantly into sprinting. She has this teary-eyed, frown plastered on her face but she also doesn't want to just completely give up.

She keeps her footsteps light and quiet, trying to imagine how a cat prowls swiftly. When she reaches another flight of stairs leading all the way back down to the ground floor, she decides that anywhere is better than being up here. Her blonde hair will give her away from high up here.

So she takes the stairs. But not the conventional way.

**1 minute : 26 seconds**

Felicity twists herself over its railing and uses the grid work of the support rods to shimmy down the side to the ground floor.

When she's successively touches her feet to the floor, it is the darkest and most terrifying she's ever felt.

The ground floor is a maze of steel support beams that make up the stairs and scaffolds of the floors above her. Nearly all of them are draped with long sheets of tarp to create makeshift walls. It makes the area look like a tunnel.

There is little moonlight through the tarps to light the construction playground around her but it causes a more difficult obstacle. It dots the floors and walls so if she crosses through it, she'll be spotted.

But she has to beat that clock.

**1 minute : 14 seconds**

Felicity takes a quick breath and sprints through.

_'This is risky! Ooh this is risky!' _she shrieks in her head...but the sound of the boots hitting the steel scaffolding above her tells her she has no time left to look around for other options.

She plans it well. She dips and hops quickly into the larger pockets of shadows and presses her back against the walls that don't face the moonlight.

It makes her feel like a badass lava jumper. But all the while her ears are strained on any subtle sounds or shifts in the shadows around her so in the end she looks like a cross between a ballerina and an addict suffering withdrawal.

**1 minute : 08 seconds**

She's almost near the end of the tunnel before it takes a sharp turn into a darker, more covered part of the floor. If she can use it properly, she can beat the clock.

**1 minute : 02 seconds**

But then some unknown force makes Felicity look up, through an opening in the tarp above, to the third level.

**1 minute : 00 seconds**

She is in perfect view of the boots and the shadow wearing them. Their back is turned, facing the other side of the warehouse searching for her.

**0 minutes : 57 seconds**

And her staring somehow gives her away.

**0 minutes : 56 seconds**

Felicity bolts before she can even finish seeing the shadow spin around. She prays her blonde hair didn't catch in the remaining moonlight as she dives frantically around the corner.

She can only make out her surroundings by using the moonlight shining above on the second level. Thankfully it is pitch black down this new pathway, so she can't be easily spotted.

But she can't celebrate. She needs to find a hiding spot NOW.

**0 minutes : 48 seconds**

She hears the boots drop like thunder onto the ground level, no doubt from jumping the twenty foot drop to catch up to her.

**0 minutes : 46 seconds**

_'Oh god!'_ she mentally cries as her green eyes flicker frantically around.

That crawl space? Nope, she'll make a sound trying to shuffle in. That empty box? Hell no! It's facing this direction! She'll be caught face-to-_freaking_-face!

**0 minutes : 43 seconds**

The boots are stomping quickly down the moonlit pathway now.

**0 minutes : 40 seconds**

Then she sees it, another sharp turn on her left into...who cares! It gives her another pocket of invisibility!

Felicity sprints around it hoping the ample amount of pressure she applies to her footsteps don't give her away.

The pathway is shorter and darker and she turns left again at the next open way.

_'Argh, to hell with this cornfield!'_ she scolds at the warehouse's obvious labyrinth setup.

**0 minutes : 28 seconds**

The boots suddenly sound on the other side of the tarp.

**0 minutes : 25 seconds**

She holds her breath.

**0 minutes : 24 seconds**

The boots run directly past her...and keep going! Down another path!

That's when she hears a loud beeping from the clock.

_The final countdown_.

**0 minutes : 20 seconds**

Felicity's heart is hammering against her ribs but she feels her lips twitch anxiously at the corners. So she keeps going down the tunnel.

**0 minutes : 16 seconds**

That's when she looks up. She spots her shining window of opportunity.

**0 minutes : 17 seconds**

When a burst of adrenaline, she takes a run at the concrete wall ahead of her.

**0 minutes : 16 seconds**

With two steps, she jumps off of it to catch a short series of steel rods supporting a large, open ledge to the second level above.

**0 minutes : 12 seconds**

Quickly, Felicity hoists herself back onto the second floor.

**0 minutes : 11 seconds**

Then she pulls up into a stand with the help of a guardrail.

**0 minutes : 10 seconds**

Felicity carefully tiptoes across the floor to the only dark corner at a spot some feet away.

**0 minutes : 07 seconds**

Her heartbeat is erratic and her fingers are all jittery.

**0 minutes : 05 seconds**

She makes it!

**0 minutes : 03 seconds**

She bends over on her knees to breathe.

**0 minutes : 02 seconds**

Then she pulls back up and puts her hand on her hips.

**0 minutes : 01 seconds**

Felicity grins despite the sweat running down her temples.

**0 minutes : 00 seconds**

A red light goes off somewhere and an obnoxious beeping tune echoes around the warehouse but Felicity doesn't care. She immediately jumps out of the corner and into the moonlight, her arms raised in victory and her creamy white skin glistening. She whoops happily.

"Round two!" she cries out loud. "I w-!"

Suddenly an invisible force knocks what little air she had left out of her lungs and slams her into the concrete wall behind her.

Felicity is so shocked, she screams and freezes instantly, not at all putting up a fight.

Oliver smirks under the hood.

"You're not supposed to freeze. I taught you better than that."

When the fear melts away seconds later, Felicity groans irritably and manages to squeeze an arm out of his hold. She reaches for the alarm attached to the belt at his hip and jabs the snooze button.

"I'm gonna throw that out a window," she says while still panting from all the running, anxiety and fear he's put her through.

His smirk turns into a small smile.

"But you won," he points out. "Outrun me twice, remember our deal?"

She all but slams her head into the wall behind her and takes a deep a breath. She stares up at the ceiling.

"The only thing I can remember right now is that cardiac arrest leads to brain injury if it's not treated after five minutes," she quips with a big gulp of air. Felicity lifts her free hand, the one she used to shut off the alarm, and rests it against his chest, for no apparent reason it seems.

"Eh...Been there, done that," Oliver mumbles airily but the tiny, blonde quirks an annoyed brow up at him.

"Yeah you have, and that usually leaves me standing over your unconscious body with the same urge to punch you in the throat that a six-year-old has for her idiot brother," she replies as she's still panting. "I worry about you, remember _that?_"

Oliver's eyebrows knit together as a frown appears on his face.

"Don't say that," he says softly, not at all referring to what Felicity thinks.

He quickly brings his head down and closes any personal space between them to capture her lips. A rush of fire in her stomach immediately ignites like it usually does whenever he does this. Felicity tilts her head up to get more and pushes back feverishly. Her heart is still pounding in her chest, but her previous need for air is gone when she feels the brush of his stubble grazing her chin. She feels him push more into her and the feel of his hard pecs sends an electric chill up her chest. The hand she still has on his uniform rushes up into the cover of his hood and she grips the back of Oliver's neck, urging him closer to her. His hood falls behind his head. Felicity smirks inwardly when she hears a tiny groan escape him and he moves forward to trap her between himself and wall behind her. One of his gloved hands that's pinning her arm to the side immediately rushes down to grab her hip, squeezing her tightly. They begin a slight grinding session until Felicity feels something long and hard against her inner thigh.

She gasps out of the kiss, noisily bringing the smack of saliva between them, and snaps her eyes open.

'_Whoa there, cowboy!'_ she cries (nervously or excitedly she still isn't sure) in her head and pushes him a teeny bit away for some breathing space. Before she can stop herself, she immaturely peeks down between them.

Oliver is holding a bottle of chardonnay in his leather glove, poking the head of it against her leg.

It looks so simple and innocent in the dark, she can't help the heated blush that blossoms across her face. Felicity immediately tilts her head back up at him and smacks him across the face, wiping his grin off as he stumbles backwards obviously not prepared for _that _reaction.

Yeah, right.

Their deal.

"All _this_ for that bottle of wine you still owed me," she repeated from their earlier agreement. She sighs dramatically and collapses against the concrete wall behind, grateful for the cold stone because it cools down her exhausted body. "Oliver Queen, you better not have plucked that off the solid gold Christmas tree of one of your mother's rich, girlfriend cougars."

Oliver chuckles. Leave it to her to put alcohol budgeting into perspective. Felicity _never_ insists on sitting on his lap of luxury because she claims to prefer things modest and 'not-so flashy'.

So he's never gonna admit to her that this '09 Batard-Montrachet cost almost _400 bucks._ Otherwise he fears she'll snap his neck in two. Or worse, his bow.

But he can't help that being a connoisseur is like, required in 'rich kid genes'. This white wine's fruity and lightweight but with a bit of a snap to it...Oliver thinks it suits her personality.

"I promise," he lies. "I stopped by the drug store on the way here."

But Felicity raises both eyebrows and pouts her lips. "It's funny how you seem to forget my 69 wpm and ability to use a Google search engine at my earliest disposal."

Oliver blinks at first because it's still hard sometimes to translate Felicity lingo. But when he gets it, he smirks and raises the bottle between them.

"Then I guess we'll have to drink first, and ask questions later," he says playfully and turns around to walk down the scaffold. Felicity gives one more sigh and smiles before she trots up behind Oliver. Then she gently places her hands on his broad shoulders and taking a quick jump, she lets him catch her. He hooks his arms under her legs and she easily wraps her arms around his neck.

"Something tells me that particular choice of words has lead to a lot of awkward mornings for you," she mumbles thoughtfully but Oliver just smiles as he continues to piggyback her down and out of the warehouse.

END.

* * *

**Done! Damn that took a couple hours haha but I had fun writing this. Oliver's deal was this, in case you're still confused as to what was going on,**

"_You get two minutes before I get to hunt you down. Out hide me once, and that bottle's yours._"

"_And what if I beat you a second time?"_

"_Then you get me."_

**And she took the deal! Why? Because because by this point Felicity's been training with him and Diggle for a while and she knew she had a bit of a chance. So when the fic started, she had already beaten the clock the first time. Writing this chase scene is preparing me for future thriller fics I want to attempt. Anyways I hoped you enjoyed! Here's hoping to all Olicity nuts like me that the show continues to keep tugging on our feelings. Or something inspirational like that. Haha so drop a review and thanks for reading!**

_Stay gold,_  
Abby


End file.
